The forum has broken the 500 member mark but unfortunately there are less than 100 active members. Still a milestone none the less. The 500 thread milestone which should occur in the next couple weeks.

581 members have never posted.
645 members have posted once.
500 members have posted between one and 9 times. (mostly once or twice)
25 members have posted 10 times or more.

On top of that I think i've banned about 8 of those members for constant advertisement spam.

I really don't rate my advise very highly. I can only offer the most basic of help. So, considering that I'm the only one that is providing ANY help whatsoever, well.....I wouldn't be hanging around much either.

So...we got the Vista HELP Forums that offers very little help and...and what? and nothing!

I've done what I can. Davehc tried also but got fed up and won't be back. I don't know what needs to be done. But SOMETHING needs to be done.

I don't know how long I can keep trying to help people without some help of my own.

I agree with you Trooper. The forum is in need of some work or a complete overhaul. I do not have a surefire solution. Options I am considering are hiring expert (or at least skilled) vista techs to login and monitor the forum. Maybe even during certain hours so the forum could be manned for more hours during a day.

Another way to boost activity is to launch a marketing campaign to drive a targeted flow of new users to the forum. The fault in this plan is again who will be helping these users.

A combination of these ideas seems like a good method to build the forum. Unfortunately this method involves a considerable investment. Other than a couple ppc advertisements the forum is not really monetized and would not have a good return on investment (ROI).

I am open to any ideas or methods that will build the forum. Also, the forum owns a lot to you for all your work and vista knowledge you have contributed to the forum. I would like to have you involved in major forum decisions in the near future.

There is something I have noticed which I find very odd, people ask questions or post their problems looking for help, however many don't come back to see if they have been offered any help, perhaps if replies to posts were advised by email and members not allowed the option to turn that off, at least that may make them come back, it's only a click on a link for them.
Who knows if they find the answers to their problems here they could become regular visitors and of course 'word of mouth' is the best advertising known to man.

Thats a good idea.
Would work better for your responses than mine though. Your advise is far better than anything I can offer. Most of the time my support is guess work.
You're right though. People just aren't revisiting. The ones that do need to be banned because they're advertising.
Another thing that is annoying is that the only people offering ANY help at all is us. I think the page logo needs a slogan which invites people to offer help rather than just ask for it.